After Pillai's revelations, Home Ministry re-examines Ishrat's files

After former home secretary GK Pillai revealed that former home minister P Chidambaram had changed an affidavit which had originally described encounter victim Ishrat Jahan and her companions as Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists, the Home Ministry is digging out the files to examine the case all over again, reports The Indian Express.

"We are trying to locate files relating to Ishrat Jahan case. We are yet to get all files as some of these are yet to be traced," said a senior official. "We are looking at the files keeping in view that new facts have come to light."

On Sunday, Pillai had claimed in an interview to a TV news channel that Congress leader Chidambaram, then home minister in the UPA government, had recalled the file on Ishrat Jahan's killing in an encounter with the Gujarat Police in 2004, a month after the original affidavit that had described her and her companions as LeT operatives was filed in the Supreme Court.

Pillai said: "Only after the affidavit was revised, as directed by the minister, did the file come to me."

A second affidavit was the filed within two months of the first, stating that there was no conclusive evidence to show that Ishrat was an LeT operative.